Month: October 2022

Last week we talked about the idea of “bounded faith” which means that we’re glad to follow God faithfully as long as we get to set the terms about certain things. Kevin observed that this would be like a bounded marriage – I’ll go to work all week and then fish & golf all weekend while you take care of the kids. Since this is not really faith at all, we discussed some ideas for going deeper in our faith walk.

Chris pointed out that last week that if he saw a burning bush, he we be more inclined to act in complete faith, but since we don’t see a lot of flaming shrubs these days, it’s hard to always know exactly what He’s calling us to do. And, since knowing God’s will for us is the first step in growing our faith, let’s start with a verse that will help guide us. Romans 10:17 says,

“Faith comes from hearing the message, and the message is heard through the word about Christ.”

Paul specifically mentions hearing the word but doesn’t mention reading it. That might be because when he wrote this, people didn’t have the same access to written material, including scripture. I think the spirit of his message is probably that a growing faith comes from exposure to scripture, no matter how we get it.  Assuming that’s true, if Paul was writing this message today, he might say that faith starts with :

1)      Having a plan to regularly read and study scripture, and

2)      Regularly attending worship and Bible studies to hear the word

One additional idea to add to our faith-enhancing recipe is to make time for reflection. Just like rain running off of hard soil, if we don’t take time to reflect on scripture, it might not get down to our faith “roots”. In some cases, it might be as if we were never even exposed to the scripture. We’ll go deeper on that idea in Part 3 of this series next week.

So, a growing faith starts with dedicating time to read/hear scripture and then reflect on it, but how much time is enough? That’s a personal decision, of course, but the answer for many (most?) of us is that we need to do more than we’re doing now.

My friend Kevin humorously observed, “If you are praying for 5 minutes out of the day, come on.  Do you realize what percentage that is of your day?  I mean 1 hour of church is 0.5% of your entire week…Do you think the big man upstairs feels that?” 

Here are a few questions to help us think more about it.

1)      Do you agree with the idea that growing our faith starts with reading and hearing more of the word? Why or why not?

2)      Growing our faith is the primary focus of today’s lesson, but what are some other benefits of consistently reading and hearing scripture?

3)      What are some ways we can reflect on the scripture?

4)      If today’s lesson inspired you, in what ways would like to be more intentional about reading & hearing the word and reflecting on it?

What if I asked you to permanently leave your home along with your family but didn’t tell you where you were going? You would probably think I had made a mistake or lost my mind. When we start going anywhere, we like to plug it into Waze, determine the travel time, review the weather, schedule our accommodations in advance, and plan for food along the way. So, it would be an odd and confusing request to ask someone to get started with no details. But that’s exactly what God told Abram (later called Abraham) in Genesis 12:1:

The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

God didn’t say “go to Canaan”, which is where they ended up, He just said, “go to the land I will show you” and, apparently, Abram proceeded in faith. God did provide guidance to Abram and his family, as we see in the next few verses, and they did arrive safely. But, at the beginning of the journey, God required that Abram trust in faith that He would guide him safely to the right place.

Although most people don’t have this level of absolute faith, in fairness to us, Abram did experience God speaking directly to Him, apparently out loud, which would make it a little easier to follow God. But even if we acknowledge that absolute faith is a very challenging standard, we can still start to incorporate more faithful thinking in our day-to-day lives.

I’ve prayed a lot and asked for a lot of blessings for myself, loved ones, business ventures, and even my favorite teams, but only a few times in life have I truly, with no hesitation, said to God, “wherever You lead, I will follow”. I tend to live by what might be called “bounded faith”. If I can live in a certain place, with a certain lifestyle, and with all the comforts I would like to enjoy, I’m glad to follow God wherever He leads me. But that’s not true faith and I’ve probably given up many blessings He had in store for me because I’ve stayed mostly on my own path.

Faith is one of those concepts that looks simple on the surface but gets way more complicated as we dig in. Here are a few questions to help us think more about our own faith journey:

Questions

1. Why do you think Faith is so important to God?
2. Do you struggle with a “bounded faith” or do you easily turn things over to God with zero hesitation?
3. Do you have any examples of where you went to God before making a big decision and felt like he guided you as you made that decision? Please share your experience if so.
4. For the flip-side of the last question, do you have any examples of decisions you wish you would have made only after going to God for guidance?
5. Why is faith something that we often struggle with? Why do we have trouble following God’s plan for our lives without hesitation?